


Stressor

by youcouldmakealife



Series: Impaired Judgment (and other excuses) [31]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-19 01:43:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14864264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: So Jared gets it, he does. He gets why it was hard for Bryce to even say it to him, he gets why it was easier to tell his mom he had a boyfriend than that he was gay, he gets how fucking terrifying it is the first time, and how even though each time gets a little easier, he still has a moment of doubt before he tells anyone. He gets it.He still expected something to change, he thinks.





	Stressor

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: use of homophobic slur, though not by any of the characters.

Jared wasn’t like, expecting Bryce to immediately come out with balloons or a giant cake or tell all his teammates or something, but. He doesn’t know. He thought maybe—

It doesn’t matter. Nothing really changes after Bryce, well, basically comes out to him. Which, like, yeah, that makes sense. Bryce telling his own boyfriend he’s gay is pretty, like — Jared already knew he was gay. Well, he didn’t know that exactly, but if there’s no one in the world more aware that Bryce isn’t straight. Like, first hand knowledge? Jared’s had that for literal months. 

Jared knows the list of people who know Bryce isn’t straight isn’t long, and that’s probably not changing any time soon. Jared’s immediate family, Bryce’s mom, Raf. Jared doesn’t know if anyone else does, whether it’s just Bryce’s mom, or maybe other family members, or, well, anyone. Jared’s like — he’s kind of afraid to ask, honestly. It was hard enough for Bryce to talk about actually being gay, Jared doubts he wants to be quizzed on how many people know about the thing he has trouble even saying.

It’s not like people who know Jared is gay is a super long list either, and he came out to his parents over a year ago. His immediate family, of course; extended family, at least most of them, he thinks, because he told his parents it was cool to mention it if they wanted. His grandpa and his grandmas know for sure. His aunt Andrea gave him an extra long hug when they went to his grandma’s for Christmas last year, and Jared figured that meant his mom had told her. 

But if you don’t count the Mathesons and the Murrays, Jared can count the people who know he’s gay on two hands. The people who know he has a boyfriend on one. The people who know it’s Bryce on one solitary finger, and that’s only because Raf was around to watch them circling each other.

Jared’s not ashamed of it, like Bryce clearly is. Or maybe not ashamed, maybe just — embarrassed? Shy? Scared? All of the above? Jared isn’t any of those either, but he’s still cautious about who he tells; not shame, just self-preservation. His parents keep worrying he’s going to out himself right out of a good draft pick, but Jared’s not interested in his sexuality reaching scouts, not now. He might want to come out in the future, he doesn’t know. Definitely not right now, though. 

The hockey community’s not exactly super welcoming to anyone that doesn’t fall into the straight white Anglo North American thing, especially the media and commentators, _definitely_ not the fuckers on Reddit and shit like that. Jared knows that more than he’d like, thanks to every fucking time Marc Lapointe comes up, getting a double whammy, all this ‘fucking french faggot’ shit. Not that Jared gives a fuck what those kind of assholes think about him, but his own teammates, future teammates, that’s different — he doesn’t give a fuck if they don’t approve, that’s on them, not him, but if they don’t, he doesn’t want to hear it. 

It’s hard to trust a guy to have your back during the game when he’s talking shit about you, or actively doesn’t respect a pretty major part of your identity, even though generally they all put whatever spats and arguments they have aside when they hit the ice. Jared’s not going to like, not trust Tristyn with a pass even though he’s a sleeptalker that insists on being super TMI about his sex life or anything. But that’s probably a far cry from how he’d feel if he knew Tristyn was a raging homophobe or something. 

Chaz was a bit of a gamble — it’s always a bit of a gamble telling someone, honestly, and the stakes vary, from the absolutely terrifying of telling his parents to like, telling Raf, a dude he might have never had to see again after camp, except across the ice, and who was clearly, even early on, not the sort of person who’d use that against him. 

His parents were a whole other thing — they’d never really said anything homophobic around him, and Jared remembers his dad muttering about them making a huge fuss about Lapointe’s sexuality instead of his play, and how it was none of their business who he dated. Jared was pretty young then, didn’t really understand sexuality beyond like — he didn’t know he was gay at thirteen, exactly, but maybe he did, because he was listening pretty closely.

So like, yeah, his parents didn’t seem like they’d fly off the handle or kick him out or any of those horror stories, and yet every single time he thought about telling them he imagined exactly that, wondered whether his grandma, who was one of those kinds of Catholics who like, legit does the ‘love your neighbour’ and ‘he who is without sin may throw the first stone’ thing and doesn’t judge anyone unless they hurt others, would take him in. He went through every worst case scenario before he told them, to the point that when he did it was downright anticlimactic that none of them _did_ happen.

So Jared gets it, he does. He gets why it was hard for Bryce to even say it to him, he gets why it was easier to tell his mom he had a boyfriend than that he was gay, he gets how fucking terrifying it is the first time, and how even though each time gets a little easier, he still has a moment of doubt before he tells anyone. He gets it.

He still expected something to change, he thinks. Major breakthrough or whatever, dam bursting. It worked like that for him: he went from no one knowing to like, at least a dozen after the all clear to tell the family happened. Bryce, though, he went from Jared like, already knowing Bryce loves him and is attracted to him, to knowing Bryce loves him and is attracted to him and is gay. It’s not really similar situations, he guesses.

Bryce doesn’t mention it again, shuts Jared down when Jared brings it up two days later with a lazy shrug, a topic change to some of the latest pranks on the Flames rookies. Jared gets taken in by it despite himself, thinking about his own nebulous future rookie status, and he wonders, after, if Bryce knew that, if that’s why it was the thing that Bryce brought up. 

Jared — he knows Bryce isn’t stupid. It drives him nuts now, seeing some of the portrayals of him in the media, some dumb asshole jock that doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together once he’s off the ice, though he also knows he bought in on that before he met him, after, even. Bryce is smart as hell about hockey, notices things Jared doesn’t, to the point where talking about a Hitmen game with him after can actively lead to a revelation about his own play, the revelations Jared usually has with coaches, game tape, people whose jobs are to make him better, the best he can be for their team.

Off the ice, he’s — he can be kind of oblivious, but at the same time can figure out Jared’s mood better than _Jared_ can sometimes, and already knows what Jared wants to order at basically all of his go to delivery places, and knows how to undo Jared with like, a mere flick of the tongue, and that’s not like, _book_ learning, but he’s not stupid. He almost definitely steered Jared away on purpose, knowing Jared wouldn’t be able to resist the topic.

Jared should probably be annoyed that he was that easy to manipulate, and he kind of is. Should maybe take the hint that Bryce doesn’t want to talk about it and let it go, except this isn’t just Bryce’s thing. Jared knows they’re coming from different places on this, have differing levels of comfort, and Jared’s cool with them being a secret now — well, kinda — but in six months, a year, five years, that might be different.

And yeah, getting ahead of yourself, Matheson, might not even be relevant in the future, but he _wants_ to get to those points, and he doesn’t think he can do it if that means he can’t tell anyone the identity of his boyfriend. It feels like lying, like _shame_ , and Jared is not about that life, not even if it means he has Bryce.

He doesn’t even know what he wants, here — not like, them announcing it to the world or anything, definitely not now, but — one finger for the people who aren’t their immediate family. One hand. His parents, Erin, Bryce’s mom, Raf. That’s it, and if Bryce had his way it doesn’t look like that’ll change any time soon, and that’s —

Jared doesn’t know how he feels about that.

He doesn’t really have anyone to talk to about this except Bryce. If he mentioned it to Chaz he’d have to like, keep changing details about the story so it didn’t reveal the whole entire issue, so it’d be useless. Plus, Jared likes Chaz, he gets along with him well, but they’re not like — they’re friends, he’d say, they generally eat team meals together and sit together on the bus, but they’re not ‘talk about issues with your boyfriend’ friends. Jared would be crazy uncomfortable if Chaz came to him talking about a problem with his girlfriend or something. Hell, Jared doesn’t even know the name of Chaz’s girlfriend, though he bets Chaz’s reasoning there isn’t so much ‘stealthily dating a Flames member’ as Jared’s is.

His parents are nope, nah, and also fuck no. Obviously Elaine’s not an option. Erin would laugh at him forever, and be zero help. So basically there’s Raf, and Jared feels bad, like, unloading on him via text, but since Bryce is shutting him down, he has to talk to _someone_ before he bottles it so hard it blows up into another fight, which is the last thing he wants right now. 

_Hey, can I ask you for some advice?_ Jared texts Raf after a day of hesitating.

Raf doesn’t respond right away, and Jared pulls up the Hurricanes schedule, realises he’s right in the middle of a game, so he works on a history essay he got an extension for with the game’s boxscore minimized. His teachers are pretty cool about giving him extra time, get that his hockey schedule makes it kind of hard to do anything that needs to be typed up on the road, especially since Jared doesn’t have a laptop or anything. Still, he doesn’t want them thinking he’s abusing the leeway, so he needs to get on with it.

 _what’s up?_ Raf texts just as Jared’s finishing his first draft, because Rafael Sanchez’s perfection extends even to timing.

Figuring out what to text Raf is more difficult than writing his entire essay was, because Jared doesn’t really — he could write an essay on what’s up, easy, but compressing it into a text is a different thing. Plus, he knows Bryce would be upset if he said some of it, like, to other people, Raf included, so he goes with stuff on his own end, writing an embarrassing flurry of texts that centre around Bryce’s discomfort and the way Jared hasn’t met the Flames, even as a friend. Which he thought he was over awhile ago, but he guesses not.

 _it’s kind of a big deal to introduce you to his team_ , Raf texts.

 _It wouldn’t be if I was his girlfriend_ , Jared replies. _We’re serious enough he would have by now. Like even if he just introduced me as a friend…idk. I bet Grace has met the Hurricanes._

 _yeah, but you’re not his gf_ , Raf says, and before Jared can text back a ‘fucking obviously’, _and you already knew he wasn’t out, so if that’s a deal breaker, you should probably break up now_

Jared exhales, because that one, that one he can’t retort to.

 _Except I don’t want to_ , Jared types finally.

_I know but do you think it’s going to be get better? If you guys want different things maybe you should end it before it gets worse_

Jared is suddenly blindingly furious with Raf, and he knows that’s not fair, but he can’t help it.

 _I don’t want to_ , he types, thumbs digging into every key, wishing he had the kind of keyboard you could hear exactly how much force went into each fucking letter. Or maybe if it were a form of communication where it didn’t just sound like he was repeating himself.

 _obviously you don’t have to if you don’t want to I’m just trying to help_ , Raf texts, and Jared exhales, all the anger leaving at once.

 _I know_ , he texts, then turns his phone facedown on his desk and focuses on editing his essay, because he doesn’t think he can handle any more of this conversation right now.

When he wakes up the next morning, he’s got a text from Raf, _what’re you going to do?_

 _Talk to him about it I guess_ , Jared says, and Raf shoots him a thumbs up in response, but Jared isn’t really feeling particularly great about it right now.


End file.
